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New Investigation in Texas E-Mail Case

E-mail messages by Charles A. Rosenthal Jr., at left in a 2006 photo, the Harris County district attorney, are under scrutiny.Credit
Karen Warren/Houston Chronicle

HOUSTON — Already forced to drop his re-election bid over e-mail love notes sent from work to his executive secretary, District Attorney Charles A. Rosenthal Jr. of Harris County faced new questions Tuesday with the disclosure of hundreds of other office e-mail messages containing racy jokes, racial slurs and political campaign materials.

Some of the messages, which were approved for release Monday by a federal judge, included attachments of pornographic videos, although it was not clear how they got into Mr. Rosenthal’s e-mail or who viewed them.

Mr. Rosenthal, 61, chief prosecutor of Texas’s most populous county since 2001 and a prosecutor for 30 years, did not respond to a message left with his office. Last week, under pressure from Republican leaders, he took his name off the November ballot for a third term.

Since Texas resumed executions in 1982, 102 of the 405 people put to death were convicted in Harris County.

Another, under his name from Sept. 28, said: “If you want to take the day off from work, come out and help, we will definitely find something for you to do.”

Section 39.02 of the Texas Penal Code makes it illegal for a public servant to use government property, services or personnel to obtain a personal benefit, and Texas politicians over the years have been prosecuted and convicted under the act.

Penalties range from the lowest category of misdemeanor if the misuse amounts to under $20, to a first-degree felony if the loss is valued at $200,000 or more. A first-degree felony can be punishable by up to life in prison.

One of the office messages showed Mr. Rosenthal trying to help his son, a lawyer, expunge old criminal offenses for a client. Others showed him gathering negative information against the Democrat planning to run against him, Clarence Bradford, a former Houston police chief, and against a Democratic state senator from Houston, John Whitmire, with whom he has clashed.

Some of the messages discussed pending cases, but it is not clear whether any of the disclosed material could jeopardize past or pending prosecutions.

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About 1,000 e-mail messages were turned over by Mr. Rosenthal’s lawyers under court directive to a lawyer for two brothers suing the Harris County sheriff and deputies on accusations of mistreatment and claiming that Mr. Rosenthal failed to investigate them. About 130 of the messages were unsealed last week, showing Mr. Rosenthal, who is married to his second wife, in amorous exchanges with his secretary, Kerry Stevens, with whom he has acknowledged having an affair in the 1980s. In a court proceeding Monday, Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt of Federal District Court in Houston, lifted restrictions on the remaining messages.

The judge ordered a hearing for Jan. 31 on Mr. Rosenthal’s deletions of more than 2,500 other messages, which his lawyer, Ronald C. Lewis, called a mistake, and the lawyer for the brothers, Lloyd E. Kelley, called illegal.

Many of the newly disclosed e-mail messages concerned Mr. Rosenthal’s re-election campaign. On Oct. 2, he used his office computer to circulate a flier, “Fund Raiser Bar-B-Que for Chuck Rosenthal, Republican for District Attorney,” with directions to the $10-per-person event. On Sept. 19, in an e-mail message marked “2008 Rosenthal Re-election kickoff BBQ,” he called a meeting “for all chair and co-chairpersons” and asked those who had collected ticket money to bring it in.

On. Sept. 7, he and his top assistant, Bert Graham, exchanged e-mail about the event, and Mr. Rosenthal wrote, “Just wanted to ask if anyone was interested in taking a day off (comp or vacation or floating holiday).”

Not all the political messages involved himself. On Aug. 14, Mr. Rosenthal forwarded to friends a message attacking the record of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, and calling her “a disaster for all Americans.” His name appeared on messages comparing her to Karl Marx. And one of the images turning up as an attachment was Mrs. Clinton as a nutcracker.

Mr. Rosenthal also forwarded to a friend a mock study of flatulence and a series of jokes making fun of University of Texas football players after several were arrested on various felony charges. He also forwarded the image of a sign saying “girls and fish have a lot in common” with graphic sexual references.

Other material that was in Mr. Rosenthal’s e-mail but did not contain his name was a photograph, titled “Fatal Overdose,” of a black man lying on a sidewalk amid watermelon peels and Kentucky Fried Chicken containers.

Other videos showed men pulling down the tops of women in the street, exposing their breasts. And several videos showed hard-core pornography, although it was not clear how they came to be among Mr. Rosenthal’s e-mail turned over as part of the lawsuit.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: New Investigation in Texas E-Mail Case. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe